Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A long time ago, in a cinema far, far away, there were some really pissed off filmgoers. People left theaters screening STAR WARS in droves furious because their hopes of seeing Darth Vader and a Stormtrooper double-team a hot babe on a bale of hay never came to fruition. Ok, maybe not droves, but it was at least one. Porn actress and director Ann Perry certainly did. Or maybe she thought she could make a quick buck with the first STAR WARS parody. Yep, beating the classic HARDWARE WARS to the punch(line) by several months, this budget-starved quickie gave people the cheap (oh, and I do mean cheap) thrills so cavalierly denied them by Lucas.

In the year 2088, three intergalactic hotties Star Babe (Tomi La Roux), Twinkle Toes (Cindy Lynn), and Milky Way (Cinthia Lee Scott), are on an intergalactic assignment from The United World Space Agency. Their mission? To head out to the planet Phallus, “interrogate the government men” and steal “the plans for the Earth overthrow”. Was this translated from another language? Who talks like that? Anyway, yes, rumor has it that the Phallus is going to take over Earth, so the three chica’s who look like they just escaped a from a roller derby must do a looooot of space travelling to get to the planet Phallus. Once there, after an embarrassing amount of stock Nasa footage and uhhhh “effects” that I’m guessing are supposed to represent a space ship passing through argyle, they must give out blow-jobs like raffle tickets at a bake sale in the effort to find those plans. Damn, are you sure this isn't an Alfonso Brescia flick?

Ann Perry, who to her credit has made some marginally entertaining sex flicks such as the women’s prison baseball flick BALLGAME (1980) and the infamous porno-western SWEET SAVAGE (1979), which to my knowledge marks the only time Aldo Ray has appeared in an adult film… and before you ask, no, he does not skin his smoke wagon. Here Perry clearly is taking the modern Wynorski approach to filmmaking: How fast can I crank this out to get it to market before the buzz wears off? Too bad she didn’t realize that she could have taken her time, because over 30 years later you can still cash in on the idea of Vader firing up his meatsaber and cumming to the dark side.

Sadly Perry really doesn’t even bother with lampooning STAR WARS at all and really doesn’t bother featuring any good sex scenes either. The very first scene is when the girls are stiiiiill travelling through space and they decide to entertain themselves by going to their bunk-bed in their tin-foil papered room where they keep a guy in a gorilla suit that talks jive. No, really. He just kinda hangs out there. Don’t ask, I don’t know. After peeling his banana, they arrive at the planet Phallus, which apparently is an amusingly trashy ‘70s bar (complete with red-leather booths and bar-tender in a Nixon mask). After ordering cocktails, the break off to find and get it on with the “government men”. The bar scene, which does feature a shot of two toy robots that, I'm guessing, are supposed to give the impression of the famous droid duo, is literally a bunch of guys in Don Post masks wrapped in bed sheets and blankets! Why the bar tender is wearing a Nixon mask is not clear. Equally unclear is why they recorded his dialogue live, through the mask, and didn’t loop it in post! I guess that would be one more thing that would delay it from going to market.

Perry is clearly obsessed with oral sex, as that is what most of the sex entails here. A guy in a mask getting a blow-job is pretty much all she has to offer. Although, Vader and a Stormtrooper do bust into the bar and kidnap one of the girls (at plastic sword-point) and have proper (if badly shot) sex with her in a tiny set with fake stone walls and a couple of hay bales (wtf?). That's really about all you get of actual STAR WARS references. The best looking girl of the lot (and hey, I’m getting old, so they all look good, really) is Star Babe herself and she barely even gets her clothes off and when she does, we don’t even really get to see her in the nip, but we do get to see her do a 69 with a guy in a mask who laps her bearded space-clam, but instead of the standard reciprocation, she tears a hole in the ass of his pants and plays lollypop with his hairy knothole. So basically what we have is a deficit of production values, no actual STAR WARS spoofery and damn, this is about as erotic as a copy of Inspire Magazine. Thanks Ann.

I was actually kind of hoping for an obscure gem that might run like a low-budget porn version of GALAXINA (1980), but in fact is just as cynical an attempt to cash in on STAR WARS as you’d expect, actually a bit more so. It’s a damn shame too, because there are some moments where you think it might take off into campy, zero-budget fun and then it simply gives up and can't be bothered. If nothing else, it shows how far the porn parody has come. Well, except for Hustler’s THIS AIN’T series. Serioulsy, did Will just pressure me into watching another one of those no-budget crapfests? Dammit Will!

1 Reactions:

Thanks for the info on this... film. Interesting stuff. Star Babe was brought to my attention because parts of it mirror the Alpha Blue roleplaying game. Too bad Star Babe wasn't the obscure gem we were hoping for. Maybe we should make our own?